


brighter than sunshine

by sapphfics



Series: fire and ice [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Lesbian Sansa Stark, autistic sansa implied...a fic should be coming soon !!, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 20:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics
Summary: Five things Sansa never told anyone.





	brighter than sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This follows show canon, and there is scene set during the time Sansa spent with Ramsay (the fourth part, if you need to skip), so there is reference to rape. It isn’t graphic, because I could never write that. But it is there.

**one.**

Sansa has always had difficulty sleeping.

In happier times - when she and Arya held hands and her family was alive and she knew all her songs by heart - she had been able to share a room. Had enjoyed it, even, knowing that her sister was there for her if she needed her. She remembers being awoken by heavy footsteps or the smell of wax. 

She has her first nightmare the night after her mother has Rickon and wakes up screaming. It’s a foolish thing, she knows, to be afraid of pain for no one can remember pain after it’s over. 

“It’s stupid,” she whispers to Arya. Arya, who can sleep with her eyes open, shakes her head. “It was as if...I could feel what she went through. Not the physical pain but...her emotions. I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re magic,” Arya mutters. “Father says there’s something in our blood, you know.”

“Maybe,” Sansa thinks and imagines herself as a winged wolf or something of that kind. She almost laughs. “Perhaps I’m cursed.”

Sometimes, Sansa thinks that dwelling on happier times is the only thing keeping her sane. 

Arya must be safe back at Winterfell by now - she thinks staring up at Joffery and begging for her father’s life - She has to be. She can despise me forever as long as she is alive to do so. 

She thinks King Landing would be almost as pretty as she imagined it if it weren’t for all the spies. She tries to get as much sleep as she can, so she can be ready to run at any moment's notice. 

It seems as though she’s lived several lifetimes before she makes it home. It takes even longer for her to start feeling even the illusion of safety again. After the trial, she and Arya begin to grow back together. 

“I stay in mother and father’s chambers because I feel safer there,” Sansa says. “I’m not trying to take their places. I just...” 

“You don’t have to tell me why,” Arya says. “I told you, our stories aren’t over yet and neither is this horrible war. There will be plenty of time to speak of such things when we’re ready.” 

Arya still has her old room, though, that remains deserted by ghosts. She spends two days crafting a second bed, which she says Sansa can use whenever she needs. 

Arya still sleeps with her eyes open. It’s almost like before. 

**two.**

A part of her still pities Cersei. In another life, perhaps, they could have been friends. 

The moment Cersei stepped out of her carriage at Winterfell, Sansa wondered if she had stepped right out of one of her songs. 

(She had thought the same of Joffery, too, but that’s unimportant.) 

_This is how a queen should look,_ she thinks, and feels as if a sword has been run through her when King Robert immediately goes to see her aunt’s tomb.

She cannot understand Robert. Even after years of marriage, even after Cersei carried three children by him, he still refuses to let Lyanna go. She wants things to be nice and pretty, like songs. Sansa had visited the tomb with her father every name day, had asked about the family he had lost. Sansa missed them. Sansa envied them for knowing her father when he was happier, freer. You can’t miss someone you never knew, can you? 

(“Robert, Aunt Lyanna is dead,” Sansa wants to scream. “She would want you to be happy!”)

She feels almost nothing but pain for her father when Robert dies. Then, nothing but pain after her father is executed. 

I tried to save him, she prays to god’s who she is certain forgot her long ago. Please, forgive me. 

She wants to push Joffery off of his pedestal. Even if she falls with him, it won’t matter. Life without her father is meaningless. Life alone is meaningless.

 _It could be worse,_ she reminds herself. Cersei could send her to the same cell she sent her father. Cersei could kill her. She is a traitor’s daughter now, someone that no one would miss. She can still pray in peace. Myrcella seems the kindest. If she asked, perhaps she could walk with Myrcella through her flower garden with reckless abandon, ripping out weeds the way Joffery rips out peasant’s eyes. 

“Love no one but your children,” Cersei says, the best advice she has ever learned. Occasionally, Sansa lies in her bed and imagines what Cersei must have gone through to be left like this. 

She is grateful Arya got away. If Arya was still here, Joffery might have killed her, cut out her tongue or worse. If Arya were left to Sansa’s means of survival, Sansa can’t imagine what she might become. Sometimes, Cersei reminds her of Arya and it frightens her more than she can put into words. 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa tells her one morning.

Cersei narrows her eyes. “What for?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sorry.” 

**three.**

She feels as though she is more like her father than her mother. Certainly, she is the spitting image of her mother and no one can deny it but -

A person is made of two halves. You can’t just have take one and pretend it’s your second chance. She goes by half of her mother’s name and dyes her hair. She has her father’s stubbornness. She can lie, a skill her father never had. She can be as strong as her mother. She has to be. 

Her mother named Bran after her first love. She thinks: If I am truly my mother’s daughter, would I name my daughter Margaery? 

No, she thinks. I could never do that. 

She talks to her father, sometimes, in her head or aloud when she feels safe enough to. It’s said to help with grief. She wonders if he can hear her, if he is proud that she has survived so long. 

**four.**

In truth, she is terrified of having a child

Her dreams are full of children that look like the family she lost. She has always expected to have them, eventually. It’s what’s expected of her, of every girl she has ever known and every girl to come after them. Find a man who will pretend to love her, bare his children, tolerate his bastards and die on the birthing bed. It is the Westeros way. 

She likes children. It is only pregnancy itself terrifies her. She watches her mother carry Rickon, watched her stomach grow, heard her agonising screams as she gave birth. 

“Love no one but your children,” Cersei had told her. She realises now that it was a warning.

_If it is Ramsay’s child, I don’t think I am strong enough._

She hates herself for even picturing the child, hates herself even more for imagining smothering the poor thing before it can learn what a monster it’s father is. But what then? Would he blame her? Take a limb until he got the son he desired and then kill her? 

She finds comfort picturing her death. If I am to die, let it happen whilst there is still something left of me, before I am forced to put his spawn into the world. Let me join my family in peace. 

“I had no idea,” Littlefinger tells her.

 _Liar,_ she thinks. But it’s not a surprise. 

**five.**

Sansa has always loved dragons. 

It was one of the only things she and her husband had in common. 

“There are worse men I could have married,” Sansa muses. “Joffery could have married me to your father, you know.”

Tyrion chokes on his wine and she lets herself laugh. 

She thinks of him now, at Winterfell. She doesn’t miss him. She reads Jon’s letter describing Daenerys Targaryen for fifth time that week as she watches the gates open. 

She suddenly understands how Daenerys has made every hero who has come across her path fall in love with her. She can’t breathe. 

Her dragons join seconds later, as mighty as she imagined. Daenerys holds out her hand and Sansa shakes it, seeming to have lost her words. 

“Hello, your Majesty. I’m Jon’s sister, Sansa. I hope you don’t mind that I...painted your door red,” Sansa says. “Uh, Jon told me you...liked red.” 

“He was right,” Daenerys replies, looking as though she might cry for reasons Sansa doesn’t know. “Thank you.” 

Looking into Daenerys’s eyes, she can see victory and peace. For the first time in years, Sansa feels the stirrings of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> this is...word vomit (again) but anyway i finally wrote something !!! i hope it’s not Too Bad. the title makes no sense and i’m sorry <3 
> 
> also fun fact about kid!me: i did sleep with my eyes open as a baby...and one other time. so!


End file.
